Experiencing Games: Games, Play, and Players

First Nordic Digra August 16-17, 2010, Stockholm, Sweden

Workshops

Collecting and analyzing video data in game studies

Jonas Linderoth, Ulrika Bennerstedt & Björn Sjöblom

There is a recent trend in fields like sociology, anthropology and educational research to rely on video data when conducting case studies. The analytical method, which is often employed, is Interaction Analysis (IA)[5]. IA may be defined as an approach/method for studying how people interact with each other and with the objects they have available in the environment. The aim of interaction analysis is to identify regularities and depict mechanisms in how people interact and conduct their affairs. IA is based on the assumption that knowledge and action are social phenomena, situated in social and material ecologies. IA is carried out together with video data that the researcher transforms into detailed transcripts. Theories of communication are then used as analytical tools in order to examine what the meanings of participants’ actions are in the analyzed session. Interaction analysis can be an approach on its own as well as a support to ethnographic observations. Ethnographic information then furnishes the background against which video analysis is carried out, and then detailed understanding provided by the microanalysis of interaction, in turn, informs the general ethnographic understanding. Some studies on games have been done in this tradition [1, 2, 3, 4,6] but there is a need to adapt this methodology to games a specific analytical object. Games comes in many forms and current approaches might not consider all of the complexity which can be found in gaming cultures i.e. players being online connected globally and at the same time engaged in face to face communication with players in the same room. Players have different screen views of the game world and thus different perspectives on events. Hand held devices also poses very special methodological challenges on how to practically collect data. Thus there is reason to produce knowledge on how to collect and analyze video data on gaming as an object of inquiry.

This workshop will introduce the participants to Interaction Analysis and give them a first hand experience of approaching video data on gaming. After the introduction participants will be divided into three smaller groups and with the help of one of the workshop organizers attempt to do some analysis on video data. The results from these group sessions will together with more general issues of technical matters, ethical considerations and analytical traditions be discussed in a concluding plenary discussion. 

References
Bennerstedt, U. and Ivarsson, J. 2010. Knowing the Way. Managing Epistemic Topologies in Virtual Game Worlds. Computer Supported Cooperative Work 19, 201-230.
Linderoth, J. (2008). The struggle for immersion: Narrative re-framings in World of Wacraft. Proceedings of the [player] conference. (IT University of Copenhagen) s. August 26-29. NR. 98215
Linderoth, J. and Bennerstedt, U. (2007). This is not a door: An ecological approach to computer games. A. Baba (Ed.), Proceedings of DiGRA (Digital Games Research Association) Conference 2007 (Tokyo, September 2007)
Linderoth, J. (2007). Besläktade spelpjäser. Avataren som rollredskap och rekvisita. J. Linderoth. Datorspelandets dynamik. Lekar och roller I en digital kultur. S. 69-83. Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Jordan, B. and Henderson, A. 1995. Interaction analysis: Foundations and practice. The Journal of the Learning Sciences. 4, 1, 39-103.
Sjöblom, B. 2008. Gaming as a situated collaborative practice. Human IT. 9, 3, 128-165.